Rivals' secret royal connection revealed as Rupert based on major socialite
Steamy TV series Rivals, currently streaming on Disney+, has already drawn in a huge audience with its raunchy sex scenes, deliciously camp 1980s-set plot, and a starry cast that includes David Tennant, Emily Atack, Aidan Turner and Danny Dyer. Winning much of the praise and flashing most of the flesh is actor Alex Hassell as playboy ex-Olympian turned Tory politician Rupert Campbell Black, a character who is loosely based on a real life gentleman with a royal connection.
Dame Jilly Cooper wrote the book Rivals back in 1988, and Rupert appears in her Rutshire Chronicles series of romance novels that began with Riders in 1986. She has admitted that a few men inspired the character of Rupert, who in the Rivals TV series we first meet emerging from an X-rated session in a Concorde aeroplane toilet with a gossip columnist, then later playing naked tennis with a married neighbour.
Jilly has mentioned her late husband, Leo, was one of the men she based Rupert on, and also Michael Howard, the 21st Earl of Suffolk, who she was friends with for more than 40 years. In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2022 following Michael’s death, she said: “He was a lovely man - huge fun. I first met him when I moved to Gloucester in 1982. Whenever he used to phone, he’d say, 'It’s Rupert here'. So I said, 'You know there are two more?' And he would say, 'Yes, but I’m the real one'."
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While Michael may have been an Earl, Jilly’s other inspiration for Rupert has an even stronger royal connection, as it is Andrew Parker Bowles, the first husband of Queen Camilla. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2002, Jilly talked about Andrew, Michael and another of their friends, David Somerset, the 11th Duke of Beaufort, as inspirations for the rakish Rupert. “They were a wildly dashing and exciting group and their bravery and charisma were the essential elements of Rupert’s character.”
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The author has, however, denied that any of Rupert’s more devious moments from her novels were based on Andrew Parker Bowles or his friends. “This was because of their charm and glamour, not for any of Rupert’s naughty behaviour!” she said.
Andrew first met Camilla in the 1960s and the couple married in 1973. They have two children, Tom and Laura, and divorced in 1995. Andrew was a guest at Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005.
Dame Jilly has revealed that she is thrilled with the casting of Alex Hassell as the iconic Rupert. “They interviewed 600 people for that one,” she said in an interview with the BBC. "He's very handsome. Rupert's blond-haired and blue-eyed in the book, but he's become dark and dark-eyed. But he’s very sexy."
